Tag Archives: melancholic

Throughout musical history, the pure and delicate sound of the piano has never really been out of style. But still, recent yearshave seen a revival of (more or less) improvised piano music, most of them (more or less) introvert and (somewhat) melancholic in style.Here’s a selection of some of them that I thoroughly enjoyed recently:

BRUNO SANFILIPPO – PIANO TEXTURES 3 The title leaves no room for surprises. This album is all about piano, and it’s #3 in a series. (Those that want all of them may want to check out the box set including all three).Bruno Sanfilippo, originally from Buenos Aires, but now living in Barcelona, is not exactly a newcomer in this musical area: he graduated the conservatory of Buenos Aires with a degree in musical composition (piano). This third part of Piano Textures follows the first two releases with the same title (2007/2009), but together these three releases are just a small part of his discography.

Next to Johann Johannsson and Ólafur Arnalds, Max Richteris one of the pioneers of the ‘post-classical’ genre, a mixture of classical music, electronic sounds and rock music influences. Mostly the compositions in this genre are suble and not too complex, often slightly (ore not so slightly) melancholic – the kind of music that feels and sounds like it’s written to be a (movie) soundtrack.

So it should not be a surprise that Richter’s Infra was originally written as a score for Wayne McGregor’s ballet as performed by the Royal Ballet.